The End, page 25
“I can’t do it, okay?”
He sounds pathetic—angry—as if it’s unfair of me not to let him wallow in self-pity. He disgusts me.
I stare through the washing machine’s transparent window, watching our clothes spin in the foam behind the glass.
“Emma deserves better. I thought you both did. I was wrong,” I say, and end the call.
NAME: LUCINDA
TELLUS #0392811002
POST 0039
My body crashed. I got a fever; my bones ached. I was so afraid I’d be hospitalized again. I wasn’t just scared for my own sake; I didn’t want Dad and Miranda to have to come and visit me at the hospital.
But it passed. I feel better. And my body only needs to last for one more week.
I haven’t had the energy to write to you. I haven’t even responded to Simon’s messages. What is there to talk about? Our shared failure?
He writes that he’s going to Stockholm the day after tomorrow to see his best friend, Johannes. At least he’s doing something.
I know I should accept that we won’t find out who killed Tilda—that it’s all been for nothing—but I don’t think I could, even if I wanted to. My brain won’t let it go. It keeps circling in the same loop, desperately trying to find new angles and ideas.
SIMON
Iwalk past the train station, up Gamla kvarngatan, spotting the power box Tilda leaned against the final time we spoke to each other.
I stop and place my hand against the cool metal.
Everyone wants to tell me what I should be doing. Little Tilda, who can be such a good girl when she wants to be.
We were standing here when the others invited us to Ali’s place for the after-party.
I’ve just been at his apartment. He and Moa were playing Skyrim with the curtains closed. The room was a cocoon full of trash and dirty plates. Both of them were pale and holloweyed, subterranean creatures made for a life in the dark. Ali’s dad met me at the door. He asked me to try to convince them to go outside for a moment. I couldn’t. But that wasn’t why I was there anyway.
I said goodbye to Ali. I told him that I understand why he wasn’t there for me. He didn’t want to risk losing our friends so close to the end. He was a coward, but if I’d been in his place, I would probably have done the same thing.
I asked him for a final favor.
I’m telling my moms that I’m going to his house tomorrow— a small sleepover party to say goodbye to the gang. I don’t think they’ll have a problem with it. And after I get back home, I’m going to stay there.
I’m going to wait for the end with my family.
I cross Storgatan. Not a single shop window is still intact. Someone has spray-painted IT’S BETTER TO BURN OUT THAN TO FADE AWAY in flaming letters across the sidewalk, and the square is disconcertingly empty. I haven’t seen a single person out and about since I left Ali’s apartment. It supposedly looks like this all over the country. People have pulled back after venting during the soccer final.
I continue home in the twilight while more and more lamps turn on in the windows around me.
My phone vibrates when I reach the park near our house. Something flutters in my stomach when I see Lucinda’s name on the screen. The feeling surprises me; I knew I’d missed her, but I only just realized how much.
“Sorry I haven’t replied to your messages,” she says.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like crap. But I’m better now.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
I look around the park where I walked with Erika less than two weeks ago. I was so relieved that someone believed me, even if it was just Tilda’s aunt. Johannes had just left for Stockholm, and I didn’t think we’d ever see each other again. Lucinda and I had just had our first argument by the lake. I wasn’t allowed to go to Tilda’s funeral. I felt so isolated. And even though we’re closer to the end now, my life has improved significantly since then.
There’s even more trash in the park now. The grass has grown wild. Someone has tossed a couple of bikes into the fountain. I sit down on its concrete edge, poke a balled-up pack of cigarettes with my foot.
“Do you know what I was thinking?” Lucinda says.
“No idea.”
“Can you see the moon?”
I look up, searching the purple-violet sky between the houses. “Yes,” I say.
The moon is full. Still pale and translucent. A ghostly image of itself.
I look up at the white disc, the dark bruises people used to think were oceans. Sea of Tranquillity. Ocean of Storms. The moon is full of craters from meteorites, a silent witness to the violence of outer space. They say it formed out of the wreckage when Earth collided with another, larger planet.
“If the moon makes it, there will still be human footsteps left up there,” Lucinda says.
A shiver runs up my neck.
“Yeah,” I say. “The only human footsteps in the universe.”
“That’s what I’m thinking about.”
“Before Foxworth, I only ever thought about the sky as the sky,” I say. “But space is actually up there. We are in space.”
Lucinda laughs. “I have vertigo now,” she says.
“Me too.”
We sit in silence.
I notice that a few yellowed leaves have drifted to the ground: signs of a fall that won’t come.
“Hey,” Lucinda says.
“Yeah?”
“I was going to ask you something, but promise me you’ll say no if you want to. It’s fine. Promise.”
“I promise.”
She takes a deep breath, like she’s preparing to dive into deep water.
“Can I come with you to Stockholm?”
My stomach flutters again.
“Do you have the energy?”
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”
“Yes,” I say. “Of course you’re coming.”
“Are you sure? Do you think it’s okay with Johannes? I haven’t even met him.”
“You’re going to like each other,” I say.
“I really need to get away.”
It sounds like she’s trying to convince herself now.
“Come with me,” I say, not caring that I sound too excited.
“I checked. There are seats left on the train.”
“Then book one. What are you going to tell your dad?”
“I was going to ask Amanda to be my alibi. It feels wrong, seeing as I can’t tell her I’m going to see Johannes. But I don’t have anyone else I can ask.”
“I get it.”
“Don’t tell anyone I’m coming with you. I really don’t want her to find out.”
I smile. “Who would I tell?”
Lucinda laughs again.
“We’re so popular.”
NAME: LUCINDA
TELLUS #0392811002
POST 0040
I’m going to Stockholm with Simon tomorrow. Dad has no clue.
I don’t know what I’m doing. Why can’t I just stay at home with him and Miranda instead? We only have one week left tomorrow.
But something occurred to me, and I can’t let it go. If there’s even a small chance that I’ll find an answer, I have to take it.
I’ve lied to so many people now. Even to Simon. (Especially to Simon.)
I feel better today. No fever or anything. It should be fine.
1 WEEK LEFT
SIMON
It’s an unusually hot day for September. The sun shines down on the world rushing past the train window. Woods, houses, woods again, the shimmering surface of a lake in the distance.
Maybe the gardens aren’t as well tended as usual, but they rush past so quickly, I can’t tell. The driver stops the train now and then to go out and manually shift the tracks, but by now we’ve traveled uninterrupted for over an hour.
The train stinks. Trash bags are spilling over. All the toilets are clogged. Spilled soda sticks to the bottom of my shoe when I shift in my seat. Someone’s smoked in here very recently.
We haven’t passed a single train during the whole journey, and the car is surprisingly empty. An infant on the other side is screaming loudly; it doesn’t even seem to breathe between each wail. Both parents meet my eyes at the same time when I look over. Their smiles are tired and apologetic.
Lucinda’s sitting opposite me, writing in TellUs on her phone.
I promised to tell her if her real hair pokes out from under the wig, but now and then she touches her forehead anyway. I study her transparent reflection in the window.
The baby screams and screams.
“Just looking at the world like this, you’d think nothing’s changed,” I say.
In the window, I see Lucinda looking up.
“That’s what messes with my head,” she says. “It’s impossible to process what’s going to happen when everything appears the same.”
We look out through the window together. Now the firs grow so close to the tracks that they’re just blurred lines. After a moment, I catch her secretly watching me in the glass. She runs her fingers through her wig, laying the hair over one shoulder.
“But it was like this before, too,” I say, turning to face her.
“Before?”
“With what happened to the environment. We couldn’t really see that, either. Not here, anyway. I mean, we read about desertification and saw pictures of polar bears on tiny ice floes, but you couldn’t really process it.”
“People didn’t want to process it,” Lucinda says. “It was too difficult to think about.”
We sit in silence for a while.
“I used to be so angry all the time,” she says.
“Me too.”
“I could never understand how people could be so incredibly intelligent and so fucking stupid and short-sighted at the same time. We knew what we were doing.”
“I know. Sometimes I feel like the older generation . . . get away with it now. They’ll never have to take responsibility for how much they fucked us over.”
“Right? I thought the worst thing was climate refugees. Where were they going to go? The same people who destroyed the world built the highest walls.”
“I thought a lot about the permafrost,” I say. “That it would thaw and release greenhouse gasses.”
“Nuclear war could have ended us before that happened,” Lucinda says, smirking.
“At least that would have solved the problem of overpopulation.”
“Did you know that every four days, the world’s population increases by a million inhabitants?”
“Shit. So we’re going to be . . . at least a couple million more before we all die.”
We look at each other and laugh. I don’t know why.
“I wonder how it would have ended,” Lucinda says. “If we’d just kept going.”
“AI, maybe?” Lucinda says. “The machines strike back. They couldn’t make a worse mess of taking care of this planet than we have.”
“Or some super virus,” I say. “Combined with antibiotic resistance.”
“Super-volcanoes.”
“The seas dying.”
“The air becoming poisonous.”
“Right-wing extremism.”
“Multiple refugee crises, which lead to more right-wing extremism.”
“No more clean water.”
“The Gulf Stream changing directions.”
“Heavy metals in the food.”
“The last bee dying.”
Lucinda’s eyes sparkle as I try to come up with the next catastrophe we’ve evaded.
“Geoengineering,” I say finally.
“What’s that?”
I confess that I have no idea.
“Maybe it’s got something to do with those researchers who tried to create a black hole,” Lucinda suggests. “Remember that? That seemed like a great idea.”
I laugh again. While we’ve been talking, nature has disappeared, and I now see shopping malls decorated with signs that will never be lit again. Small clusters of buildings that seem scattered, almost at random. A car that’s been abandoned in the middle of the highway.
I try to imagine what the landscape looked like when the first people arrived here. Before we blew up mountains, built roads, chopped down forests. It’s impossible.
“In retrospect, I don’t know why we didn’t do everything we could to save the Earth,” Lucinda says. “Why were we arguing about all kinds of petty shit instead? Maybe we could have done it if we’d really decided to. We should have rebelled against everyone who destroyed the planet just to make money. Put them in jail.”
I notice that the baby has stopped crying.
“Do you want me to tell you something weird?” I say.
“Has anyone ever said no to that?” Her eyes glitter expectantly again, but what I’ve just caught myself thinking is something I haven’t wanted to admit even to myself.
“I think there’s something kind of beautiful about it ending this way,” I say. “Not that I’m happy about it . . . but if everything’s going to hell anyway, at least it isn’t our fault. And we can’t do anything about it.”
Lucinda’s gaze is thoughtful.
“Do you know what I thought when I first heard about Foxworth?” she asks. “That I wouldn’t have to miss out on everything by dying. I’d get to see how it ended. I was almost . . . happy. Maybe not happy. But . . . less sad. For a while. Sometimes.”
“I can understand that.”
The world suddenly tilts as the train goes around a curve. Lucinda’s water bottle slides across the table and we both reach out to catch it. Our fingers touch. She looks away. Twists the lid on tighter, and throws the bottle into the tote bag on the seat next to her.
I want to touch her again.
The thought seems to come from nowhere, but I’m not surprised by it. It feels as if it’s been there for a while, and only just surfaced. Maybe it’s because we’re so far from the places we know, in this no-man’s-land between two cities.
Or maybe it’s because talking about the apocalypse is so fucking sexy.
Lucinda goes back to writing in TellUs. I glimpse oversized cranes, long since abandoned, outside the window. We pass a train station, then another one, pass the center of a suburb and cross another highway. And finally, the beautiful, old-fashioned houses in muted colors appear. Oxblood. Moss green. Mustard yellow.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re entering Stockholm Central. Next, Stockholm Central. The final destination.”
The voice coming through the speakers is unnaturally cheery. As the parents stand in the aisle and pull their bags from the shelf, the baby starts screaming again.
Lucinda sends her TellUs text into space and tucks her phone into her pocket.
The train slows down with a painful screech. I look out at the platform. Upturned faces look back at me; everyone’s looking for someone. The car stops with a jolt that causes the baby’s parents to stumble against each other. Then the train grinds to a halt, and I see him.
Johannes waves wildly outside the window.
He looks the same. Just happier than he has in a long time.
NAME: LUCINDA
TELLUS #0392811002
POST 0041
This is what I know:
Johannes was in love with Simon.
Simon was still in love with Tilda, talked about her all the time. It couldn’t have been easy for Johannes.
Johannes was in town and watched the soccer game, but he disappeared early, and was the only one in the gang who wasn’t at the after-party.
That same night, Tilda dies.
A few days later, Johannes leaves town. Deletes all his social media accounts.
Everything above is fact. Here are the speculations:
What if Johannes killed Tilda?
Tilda knew how Johannes felt about Simon. Maybe she tried to talk to him about it?
Or did he come to her?
Or maybe they just ran into each other in the chaos. Started fighting, things got out of hand.
Or it was planned. Maybe Johannes hoped Simon would forget Tilda if she vanished. Maybe he wanted to be the one to comfort Simon.
But Simon didn’t forget Tilda. In fact, the exact opposite happened. And Johannes ran the risk of being discovered, so he fled to Stockholm.
* * *
Have you noticed how many ors I’m using here?
I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to do.
Johannes is Simon’s best friend, the only person who stood by him when Tilda’s body was found.
What if I’m wrong?
But what if I’m right?
SIMON
Some pigeons take off below the domed ceiling of Stockholm Central Station. All of the shops and cafés are closed. Only a few people are actually moving. Most of them are sleeping on benches, or sitting and looking at their phones.
We take the escalators to the underground entrance to the subway. More closed-down shops and cafés. Trash and old newspapers lie discarded in heaps along the walls. An ad for an apartment complex that was going to be built in Mälardalen still hangs on a wall: laughing men and women eating dinner on a dock in the sunset, glimmering water in the background.
A couple of women from Jehovah’s Witnesses try to hand us garish flyers of Jesus and Mary, Jesus petting lambs, Jesus surrounded by children. We wave them off. I find myself thinking that all the religions were wrong in their predictions about when the world would end. Now, they finally have a date that won’t disappoint them.
The ticket barriers stand open at the subway entrance. We walk past empty booths where guards once sat, take the escalator deeper underground, and eventually reach the platform for the red line going south.
“The trains come kind of sporadically,” Johannes says, and nods to the turned-off signs. “They usually show up every hour or so.”
“It’s so quiet,” Lucinda says, looking around.
